Ex-Security Chief Questions Israel's Handling of Iran - NYTimes.com - 1 views
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The recently retired chief of Israel’s internal security agency said Friday night that he had “no faith” in the ability of the current leadership to handle the Iranian nuclear threat
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“I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings,” said Yuval Diskin, who stepped down last May after six years running the Shin Bet, Israel’s version of the F.B.I.
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“I have observed them from up close,” Mr. Diskin said. “I fear very much that these are not the people I’d want at the wheel.” Echoing Meir Dagan, the former head of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, Mr. Diskin also said that the government was “misleading the public” about the likely effectiveness of an aerial strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
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“A lot of experts have long been saying that one of the results of an Israeli attack on Iran could be a dramatic acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program,” Mr. Diskin said at a community forum in Kfar Saba, a central Israeli city of 80,000. “What the Iranians prefer to do today slowly and quietly, they would have the legitimacy to do quickly and in a much shorter time.”
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Shin Bet does not deal with foreign affairs, and Mr. Diskin was careful to say that he was not saying that attacking Iran “is not a legitimate decision,” but instead he was questioning the leaders’ motives and abilities. “I am just very afraid that they are not the people who I truly would want to be holding the wheel when we set out on an endeavor of that sort,
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Mr. Diskin’s comments were significant because he left the government in good stead with Mr. Netanyahu — unlike Mr. Dagan, who was forced out — and because he was widely respected “for being professional and honest and completely disconnected from politics.”
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Mr. Diskin did not limit his critique to Iran. He said Israel had in recent years become “more and more racist,” and, invoking the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, said there are many extremist Jews today who “would be willing to take up arms against their Jewish brothers.”